Presentation Description:

In the Spring of 2018, the Center for Online Learning Research and Service at the University of Illinois Springfield announced an Open Educational Resources (OER) Fellows Program for faculty. The initiative serves to reduce or eliminate students’ textbook costs by increasing the adoption and use of OERs in classes. OERs are freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media. In higher education, the use of OERs range from an individual module or learning object to an entire textbook to an entire course.

The OER Fellows Program serves to encourage faculty adoption of OERs with the goal of reducing students' textbook costs and increasing access to higher education through greater affordability. The adoption of OERs by faculty can provide students with access to superior and more current learning tools, and provide them with access to course materials after the course ends, unlike rental textbooks options.

Outline:

1. Description of the OER Fellows program at UIS
   • Application and selection process
   • Anticipated cost-savings for students
2. Faculty experiences: wins, challenges, and lessons learned
   • Motivating factors for considering adopting OERs
   • Process for finding and evaluating OERs and replacing existing content
   • Struggles and unexpected issues experienced
   • Students' initial reactions to OER

Presenters:

Michele Gribbins, eLearning/Data Specialist

Ahmad Juma'h, Associate Professor, Accountancy

David Holland, Clinical Instructor, Biology

Tiffani Saunders, Lecturer, Sociology/Anthropology

Benefits of OER Fellows Program:

• Support as needed to evaluate OER materials and increase adoption
• Development training in e-text, iAuthor, and other OER creation tools
• Mentoring support and assistance for presentation and publication on the topic of OER adoption
• Support for conference attendance (up to $1,000) to present on their OER adoption experience
• A $2,500 stipend to be paid after OER materials have been adopted in their two designated courses

EXpectations of OER FELLOWS:

Individual faculty accepted into the one-year OER Fellows Program commit to move at least two courses from textbooks to fully utilize OER materials by the end of the year. In addition, they commit to the following:

• Provide a brief overview of their OER adoption plan for publication on the COLRS OER Fellows website
• Attend faculty development to learn appropriate OER tools, including the Intellus software
• Provide regular progress reports on their OER adoption at COLRS OER Fellows meetings (approximately two per semester)
• Present or co-present their OER adoption experience at a COLRS-sponsored UIS event (e.g., faculty development workshop, Community of Practice in e-Learning workshop)
• Present and/or publish at national conferences on their adoption of OER materials
• Provide ongoing evaluation of OER materials and update OERs used in their designated courses at least every three years or more frequently if demanded by the discipline
• Make any generated materials (e.g., eText, iBooks) available for use within UIS and/or assign a creative commons license for use by others
• Ensure that any adopted OER or generated materials are meet accessibility requirements

Application Process:

Full-time UIS faculty applied for a one-year appointment term. Application questions included:

• Why are you interested in becoming an OER Fellow?
• What is the title and number of each course that will be converted to OERs?
  • How frequently is each course offered?
  • What is the approximate average enrollment of each section of each course?
  • What textbook materials are currently used in each course, including their ISBN, title, author, edition, and current bookstore cost?
• For each course, do you plan to adopt existing OERs, to create your own materials, or both?

Selection Process:

• Committee of faculty members evaluated applications
• Selection based on potential for significant contribution of OER adoption and possible benefits to UIS students

Proposal Evaluation Rubric

Description of Initiative

• Good: Initiative is clearly described.
• Fair: Some details of the initiative are provided, but more details are needed.
• Poor: Initiative is unclear or does not address goals.

Reach of the Initiative

• Good: Initiative has the potential to reach a large number of students.
• Fair: Initiative has the potential to reach a fair number of students.
• Poor: Initiative has the potential to reach only a small number of students.

Impact of the Initiative on Students’ Textbook Costs

• Good: Initiative has the potential to reduce significant costs for students.
• Fair: Initiative has the potential to reduce costs for students, although the costs are not significant.
• Poor: Initiative has the potential to have only a minor impact on the costs for students.

Development of Open Educational Resources

• Good: Applicant plans to develop resources that will be openly-available for use by others.
• Fair: Applicant plans to develop resources but will not make them available for use by others.
• Poor: Applicant plans to use existing open resources without developing resources.

Financial Analysis

Historic Course Enrollment Per Year x Cost of Current Textbooks (new, used, digital, rental) = Estimated Annual Cost Savings for Students

Per course figures ranged from $1,110 to $17,098

Panel Discussion

Q1 - What motivated you to consider adopting OERs?

Q2 - Where are you in your OER adoption process? What has been your process for finding and evaluating OERs and replacing existing content?

Q3 - What struggles, unexpected issues and questions have you experienced along the way

Q4 - What have been your students' initial reactions to OERs?